The Dictatorship
The Declaration contains perhaps the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand
AMERICA’S 250TH — A GUEST ESSAY BY WALTER ISAACSON
When Thomas Jefferson finished a first draft of what was to become the Declaration of Independence, he sent it to Benjamin Franklin on the morning of Friday, June 21, 1776. “Will Doctor Franklin,” he wrote in his cover note, “suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”
For the next 10 days, the drafting committee made edits and tweaks. Most notable was the crafting of the soaring second sentence. Other nations had been born out of conquests and rebellions, usually based on tribal or religious identities.
But the United States was born out of an ideal, which they proclaimed in the memorable words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It may be the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation it brought forth, we have become increasingly polarized. But birthdays can be a time to put differences aside and celebrate, with gratitude, who we are. One way to lower the temperature is by appreciating anew the sentence that became our common creed and mission statement.
ON THE CALENDAR
No birthday party quite like a 250th. Americans will turn out this weekend in red, white and blue for barbecues, fireworks, parades and more in New YorkBostonChicagoLos AngelesMiamiHoustonCharlotte and everywhere in between. Happy birthday, America.
In the Big Apple, the “largest flotilla of the world’s tall ships” from more than 20 nations will sail down the Hudson through New York Harbor at Sail250. And down at Coney Island, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest returns for its 111th year. The over/under, as always, is stomach-turning.
In Washington, the Capitol Fourth Concert — featuring Patti LaBelleKool & The Gang and the National Symphony Orchestra — joins the National Mall’s Great American State Fair and the Independence Day Parade down Constitution Avenue. A full dance card, even by D.C. standards.
In Atlanta, runners will fly down 10 kilometers of the Track Club’s Peachtree Road Race. And if you’re not fleet of foot, there’s a $100 gift card waiting for the best sign.
Out west, Festival Napa Valley’s summer season begins this weekend: operas, jazz orchestras and a culinary garden showcasing the best of Napa. No better way to spend a summer evening.
And on the pitch: the World Cup’s Round of 32 ends today, and the Round of 16 gets underway. Argentina faces the tiny but mighty Cape Verde; Canada and Morocco meet tomorrow; and Norway takes on Brazil Sunday.
And on Monday night in Seattle, the U.S. takes the field with a quarterfinal berth on the line. Not a bad way to ring in the next 250.
LETTERS FROM OUR READERS
For today’s special edition, we asked you about your fondest Fourth of July traditions. Here’s what The Tea community said:
My mom’s birthday was July 4, 1924. She always was a proud Yankee Doodle Dandy and a proud American. Dad, a WW2 vet, would always dress in red, white and blue from his hat to the socks every 4th of July for both the country and his wife. It was always bbq, family and whoever stopped by. Fun times that we still honor!
—Doug L., Charlotte, North Carolina
Every 4th of July my Dad, along with his fellow American Legion cronies, started the day with a flag raising ceremony in the town center-then, they all marched in the town parade and finally finished the day with the town fireworks. They did this tirelessly and with much pride year after year. These true blue real patriots taught me all I needed to know about being an American. Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labour Day this group of Americans taught the entire town that being a proud American wasn’t about wearing red, white and blue or yelling at the top of our lungs, but rather quietly taking care of those who might need a helping hand. They’re all gone now, but the memory of what they did has stayed with me all of my 78 years. Happy Birthday, America!
—Anonymous
One of my most cherished memories is of my dad on July 4, 1976 — America’s Bicentennial. As a skilled pyrotechnician, he was entrusted with creating the fireworks display from a barge just off the coast of Long Beach, California. It was a breathtaking show that lit up the sky for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spectators.
Standing there watching, I couldn’t have been prouder. Seeing my father’s talent and hard work bring so much joy to so many people is a memory I’ll carry with me forever. He loved this country and took great pride in celebrating its history that day.
P.S. He was a lifelong Democrat, and knowing him as I did, there’s no doubt he never would have voted for Trump.
— Roseann H., Canoga Park, California
As a child every year my small mountain community of Crestline in Southern California would hold a parade and I was so excited that I finally was able to ride my horse in it, much to my mother’s chagrin because she walked next to me!
—Kelly M., Temple, Texas
One 4th the parade was held in Houlton, Maine, and it snowed that day.
—Johnny L., Norwich, Connecticut
July 4th, 1976, found me in Zurich, Switzerland celebrating the holiday with other Americans working abroad. Some of my new friends were from the American south and some, like me, were from the north. The highlight of the evening was walking through the streets singing competitively, at the top of our lungs “I Wish I Was in Dixie” and “Yankee Doodle.”
— Monique N., Branford, Connecticut
Visiting the Gettysburg National Park on Independence Day 2025.
Outside of an active-duty military base, there is only one place I can think of where you will consistently see license plates from every corner of the country. Our national battlefields. Blue states and Red ones. East Coast and West Coast. Midwest ‘flyover states’ and Massachusetts. The apparently well-off and those who are probably struggling.
But, in some way, Americans who visit are on the same path of trying to understand why and who they are; not as themselves necessarily, but who they are in the big, collective puzzle of being American.
Where else do you see a rusted-out truck from the Midwest parked next to a brand new BMW with New York plates? Or a Mississippi big rig driven by a cigar-toting Southerner with a Confederate flag in his window beside a minivan from New Hampshire, piled to the ceiling with kids, bicycles, and a stressed-out dad?
(I observe the dad has a brief and friendly chat with the Mississippian. He ascended Little Round Top, hands on hips, let out a deep breath, and observed the Valley of Death below him. I felt his stress ease away as if he had a renewed understanding of life and what’s truly important in it, given the great context before him).
People from entirely different corners, abilities, and wealth, standing on the same piece of land their grandfathers engaged in combat over. Our shared history. There is a quiet but sure power about these places, bringing Americans together every day. The ground remembers who we are. It’s time for us to as well.
— Adam B., Mount Pleasant, New York
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls “revolutionary.” In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is “The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again.”
The Dictatorship
We should be exalting this major American milestone. Instead we’ve got Trump’s Great American Fair.
This piece is part of“America in the balance: the fight for our history and future,”a special series from MS NOW that explores where we are as a nation as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
One of my first fond memories was watching a patriotic pageant on TV, celebrating a major American anniversary, led by a president who, as a candidate, promised to “Make America Great Again.”
It was July 4, 1986, and the Statue of Liberty was turning 100.
Two years earlier President Ronald Reagan had appointed Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca to helm a foundation that would raise private funds, in coordination with the National Park Service, to restore Lady Liberty in time for its centennial. France’s fantastic gift of a few hundred tons of copper, granite and steel had been looking the worse for wear after a century of weathering the elements in New York Harbor — and “Liberty Weekend” was a ubiquitous, nationally televised four-day event featuring A-list performers and tall ships parading through the harbor, culminating in a massive fireworks display.
It wasn’t just because I was so young that the moment resonated. This was a pervasive American happening, celebrated by millions no matter their party.
I was just a little kid, and I hadn’t yet formed a political identity. Given a few more years to read up on the topic, I’m sure I would have had strong opinions about Reagan and the divisive politics of his movement, to say nothing of the jingoistic, late-Cold War era style of rah-rah American patriotism.
But it wasn’t just because I was so young that the moment resonated. This was a pervasive American happening, celebrated by millions no matter their party. And looking back on it, the messaging seems pretty unobjectionable: America is a land of opportunity, appreciative of its allies, welcoming of the “poor…huddled masses yearning to be free,” confident that the uniquely American melting pot is not only a good thing, it’s our thing.
Liberty Weekend also featured a helpful reminder for why we were all celebrating a statue, and why Americans felt so patriotic about it. As the Los Angeles Times reported, “Standing before the ghostly red-brick ruins of historic Ellis Island, [Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren] Burger swore in 267 people from 109 countries with a solemn oath of allegiance to this melting-pot nation of immigrants.”
I remember thinking at the time that, with any luck, I’d be alive to witness the next big, round American anniversary, the semiquincentennial — which would surely be an even more awesome and universally patriotic celebration of America’s best and most enduring values.
Well, that time has come. America’s 250th birthday is here and the president is yet another Republican who promised to make America great again.
But instead of a near-universal event celebrating the miraculous success of a nation proud to be made of immigrants, we have Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair, which kicked off on June 24 with a sparsely attended and barely watched opening ceremony featuring a military band playing cartoonish “patriotic” tunes like “Real American (Hulk Hogan’s WWE theme).”
Remarking on the many performers who dropped out of the event weeks ago — once it was evident that it would be a hyperpartisan political rally rather than a celebration for all Americans — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy praised the military band as “way better than those libtards that canceled on us.” (Duffy, a father of nine, has a child with Down’s syndrome, who was onstage as he expressed his version of patriotism.) And rather than even pay lip service to uniting the country, Trump’s low-energy speech rambled through his rote menu of culture war red meat, liberally peppered with falsehoods and braggadocio about the war he started, swiftly lost and now seems helpless to bring to an end.
The day after Trump’s fair kicked off, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s move to revoke temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and thousands from Syria who fled their war-torn countries. The architect of Trump’s war on immigrants, Stephen Miller, told reporters that same day, “One way or another, this nation has to end birthright citizenship.” (That dream of Miller’s was crushed on Tuesday when the Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s executive order to end birthright citizenshipallowing a nation founded by immigrants to breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now.)
I’m not trying to put rose-colored glasses on the Reagan era, but when it came time to celebrate America on a grand scale — to express a universal version of patriotism — Ellis Island was the backdrop, and the swearing in of new American citizens was the ceremonial coup de grace. Trump’s celebration is only of himself, and all he could offer the few attendees was fear and hatred for “the other.”
It would have been nice for America’s 250th birthday to have been celebrated with class, fellowship and optimism — like Liberty Weekend 40 years ago. Instead, the semiquincentennial looks to be a limp and dreary nonevent, attended by extraordinarily fewunifying no one and mostly ignored even by its target audience.
Say what you will about Reagan, but he understood far better than Trump what really makes America great.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.
This is an adapted excerpt from the June 30 episode of “The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi.”
In the 2024 elections$9.5 billion was spent on congressional races, and $5.3 billion on the presidential race, for a total of $14.8 billion on federal political campaigns, according to data compiled by Open Secrets.
That makes 2024 the second-most expensive election cycle in history, second only to the 2020 election figure of $18.7 billion.
This is not the way the system is supposed to work. Or is it?
Of that $14.8 billion, an estimated $1.9 billion came from so called “dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies that spend on elections without revealing their donors,” a figure that nearly doubled from 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
One man, Elon Muskthe world’s richest man and an ardent backer of far-right causes, spent more than $291 million in the 2024 elections, an analysis by Open Secrets found. That made him the biggest individual political donor in the entire 2024 election cycle.
In this election cycle, Musk has poured another $85 million into groups supporting Republicans running in the midterms, per The Washington Post.
This is not the way the system is supposed to work. Or is it?
A majority of Americans don’t seem to think so. Seventy-two percent say there is too much money in politics, according to recent polling from Politico. That many Americans usually don’t agree on much of anything.
But too much money in politics is there by design. Campaign finance laws allow outside groups to pour vast sums into elections.
And here’s the thing: It’s a really bad return on the investment. The U.S. stands alone among our peer nations. According to The Wall Street JournalCanada’s 2021 federal election saw spending of “$69 million in today’s dollars—about 1/27th the price tag per voter south of the border. U.S. elections cost about 40 times more per person than the U.K. or Germany.”
Now, in fairness, Canada’s population is about one-tenth the size of that of America. But multiply the $69 million by 10, and you still aren’t at $1 billion, let alone $15 billion.
This has been an escalating issue in American politics for the past half century. In 1976, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Buckley v. Valeo that declared most campaign spending limits unconstitutional. In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissionthe problem was supercharged. With that decision, the Supreme Court opened the door for corporations and other groups to spend unlimited funds on elections.
This led to the creation of super PACswhich can campaign on behalf of candidates from whom they are ostensibly separate, all while keeping their donors shrouded in secrecy.
But it wasn’t just on the federal level. NPR noted how in 2011, “The court dismantled Arizona’s public election financing scheme, which gave money to less-funded candidates in order to equalize spending between politicians. And in 2014, the court struck down limits on how much money an individual can donate in national elections.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court dismantled one of the few remaining limits on money in politics, striking down spending limits imposed on political parties themselves. The law had been on the books since 1974, passed as a post-Watergate safeguard against corruption.
Democracy is perverted and corrupted when the wealthiest Americans can use their money to blanket the airwaves with their political messaging.
This case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, began in 2022 when JD Vancewho, at that time was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, sued to challenge limits on campaign spending.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan spelled out the consequences of this move. “With no limits on coordinated expenditures, the party can serve as the candidate’s checking account,” she wrote, adding that the decision creates “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions’ democratic legitimacy.”
We all get one vote. That’s democracy. But that democracy is perverted and corrupted when the wealthiest Americans can use their money to blanket the airwaves with their political messaging.
Wide majorities of voters, both Democrats and Republicans, believe the amount of money spent on campaigns is corrupting our elections. Refusing to take corporate PAC money has become a point of pride for many Democratic candidates running in the midterms.
But, thanks to the court’s ruling, they, and everyone else who cares about cleaning up this polluted campaign finance ecosystem, have their work even more cut out for them.
Allison Detzel contributed.
Ali Velshi is the host of “Velshi,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays on BLN. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting for “How the Wheels Came Off,” a special on the near collapse of the American auto industry. His work on disabled workers and Chicago’s red-light camera scandal in 2016 earned him two News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations, adding to a nomination in 2010 for his terrorism coverage.
Oscar Kim Bauman is a Segment Producer for “The 11th Hour with Ali Velshi.”
This piece is part of“America in the balance: The fight for our history and future,”a special series from MS NOW that explores where we are as a nation as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence promised liberty to people it enslaved, and at the 250th anniversary of that signing, Americans are confronted with uncomfortable questions, among them, why the civil rights framework we built to enforce our founding document’s promise of liberty continues to fall short.
The answer is in our civil rights architecture. We built a jurisprudence that, by identifying violations and punishing wrongdoers, mostly seeks to bring a halt to discrimination after it occurs. To be sure, that architecture has produced indispensable gains, but our country declared racism illegal while leaving in place the infrastructure that produces racial inequality: the land use decisions that segregate neighborhoods, the transportation systems that isolate communities from opportunitythe housing and lending policies that concentrate wealth and poverty, the schools that reflect those patterns of exclusion and the public institutions that distribute resources unevenly across race and place.
The civil rights framework we built to enforce our founding document’s promise of liberty continues to fall short.
As long as those systems continue to shape where people live, learn, work, travel and access opportunity, discrimination will continue to be reproduced, even when individual acts of bias are prohibited.
The evidence is clear that by itself, prohibiting discrimination cannot fulfill our founding promises. Racial inequality, which persists in 2026, was built from the ground up, so the system of racial justice to combat it must be built from the ground up, too. This 250th year of our country taught us this lesson well; the Supreme Court further gutted the Voting Rights Act, one of the few civil rights laws drafted to help prevent discrimination from happening.
More than a decade agothe court struck down the section of the Voting Rights Act that required states and localities with a documented history of discriminatory voting practices to obtain federal “preclearance” before changing their voting laws. In April’s regrettable Louisiana v. Callais ruling, it gutted the section drafted to ensure fair representation for Black and other marginalized voters. The formal right to vote still exists, yes. But when the infrastructure of democratic participation is torn down — when polling places close, voter rolls are purged and districts are redrawn to dilute marginalized voters’ political power — the formal right is hollow. A right to vote has little meaning without an infrastructure around it that makes it real.
The rush by multiple Southern states to dilute the voting strength of marginalized voters after the Callais ruling was a demonstration that the Voting Rights Act, as it was written, is still needed.
The Supreme Court’s body blow to the Voting Rights Act not only represents the erosion of voting protections but the abandonment of a model of racial justice that pairs the prohibition of discrimination with the prevention of it, a model that is necessary if we are to come closer to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
Not only do we need to restore the Voting Rights Act, but we also need more similarly constructive civil rights laws that reorient our racial justice framework. That is, we need to move beyond civil rights law that focus on discriminatory intent toward richer analyses that ask whether, regardless of intent, a law, policy or institution predictably produces racialized disadvantage. Such a racial justice framework would acknowledge that many racial harms are not just individual but also collective. For example, the displacement of a community, the devaluation of its property, the destruction of its infrastructure. A racial justice framework would treat the design of transportation, housing, environmental protection, public investment and education as a matter of constitutional significance, not merely technical policy.
We’re in another reconstruction moment, and we need the same things the country needed during its previous reconstructions.
A state that adopts policies focused on affirmative obligations aims not only to refrain from discrimination, but to promote full participation in civic and economic life. Equity impact assessments, participatory planning requirements, community stabilization policies and forward-looking redesign mandates, for example, can help ensure that public systems sustain, rather than undermine, democratic inclusion and belonging.
None of this is radical but is instead a return to what this country did at its most expansive moments of democratic ambition. Reconstruction spawned the building of public schoolsvoting rights protections and federal civil rights enforcement. The New Deal — another kind of reconstruction — reshaped the relationships between government and economic security, and built social security, unemployment insurance, bank deposit insurance and more. The Civil Rights era — yet a third moment of reconstruction — brought an end to legally sanctioned segregation while also expanding access to jobs, housing, education and political power. In each of those moments, equality became more durable because it was embedded in the structures of everyday life.
We’re in another reconstruction moment now, and we need the same things the country needed during those previous reconstructions. To get us started, we need to protect meaningful political participation, strengthen the agencies that enforce our civil rights laws and invest in the public infrastructure that makes opportunity real.
The semiquincentennial has produced no shortage of commentary about the gap between America’s promises and its reality. Most of it is diagnostic. This call is something different: a demand for a more ambitious account of what equality requires and a demand for more ambitious action to make those requirements a reality.
If we truly want to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, we cannot just defend against discrimination. We must build a society that makes discrimination unthinkable and justice inevitable. That is the work this anniversary demands. Because you don’t respond to a demolition by mourning. You respond by building.
Deborah N. Archer is president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor of law at New York University. She is the author of “Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. “
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